♪ funding for this program was provided by... [ clock ticking ] i'm trying to get the language to transform or create a whole other description than the one that you see that is presented for you.

she is somebody who works in two dimensions, in three dimensions, who works in space, who works with your space. woman: they're very large. in relationship to the person standing there, it's quite large, and it's like a scene you could almost walk into. man: i never printed on felt before, and i didn't know how the ink will respond to it. woman: we have three weeks in order to get everything for the show completely printed and ready and up on the wall. man: i think that she continues to challenge and confound her audience, and i think that that's very exciting. it was a moment at which, you know, there was a real sense that something had happened, something was occurring.

woman: i was traveling with a girlfriend of mine, and came across a book by, i think, pat calafia, which the title is "public sex," but it's about sexual activity in public places, and laws around that, and social mores around that activity. and that kind of interests me in terms of subject matter and kind of creating narratives, and documenting different sorts of places. there should be seven different images in this show,

and kind of various sizes. so there's a rock, a park, an office building, a fire escape, two hotel rooms, a parked car. within those different environments, the work is kind of focusing on private activities that take place in public spaces. so i tried to first focus on places that are well-known arenas for that kind of activity. places that come to mind just in terms of everyone's experience, like a car, like a hotel room, which is a public space. a park. sex in parks or bathrooms in public areas.

there's nothing special about the process of taking the picture to me. it's just a 2 1/4 camera, black-and-white film. take it to the lab. get it developed. and then the real thing starts with getting the images together for silk-screening. so that's really where the technical side of it becomes more intense in terms of getting the image right. okay, so now i can just put the compressor on and stretch. simpson: so i looked up jean noblet, who i had worked with before in using silk-screen, but on paper. his studio and his setup is completely mechanized. we are increased, now, the pressure to 10 newtons. probably '92, '93, i started shifting away

from using photographic images solely on photographic paper in frames or polaroids, and started looking for other methods and other ways of reproducing images on different sorts of surfaces, like glass, which is what i've been doing now. just printing on felt. i had been working with a printer in portland, oregon, and it was coming very close to the due date of the show, and he was unable to print it. the image was not coming up. it was very inconsistent. and the process, which was lithography, that we had been using, did not work. we didn't have the time, because we had already been working on it for about three months. what i needed was a process that would deliver more ink to the surface of the felt, and silk-screen provided that process. so we have this screen, which is a mesh.

this screen is colored, and then we expose the screen so we have the image ready to go. so this machine has one squeegee, which is kind of a rubber blade. we help the ink be pushed through the mesh. and then we have a flood bar we'll bring back, and flood the screen back to the starting point of the cycle. and i'm ready to go. i love that. jean has this ultraviolet dryer which he uses for paper, which just immediately dries ink so that you can stack, and kind of work very quickly. and that proved to be one of the most important pieces of machinery in this project, because it allowed us to dry out the felt --

prevent it from completely expanding -- but also, because we're delivering so much ink to the surface, allowed us to dry it fairly quickly, where, other circumstances, it would take weeks for it to dry. the first one is always amazing, huh? part of the thing that i like about using felt is that it doesn't need to be framed and protected. but there is a kind of density that the felt has that's very attractive. and the way that the images print on them -- because of its surface, light is absorbed rather than reflected, as with different surfaces. because they're blown up so large, they're much grainier, a little bit more tougher quality to the way the images, since the means by which it's reproduced, also has a much coarser feel to it. you're sure you will have enough space to put them on the walls? yeah. i looked at that yesterday. we'll fit four -- it gets kind of -- i thought maybe four tall it wouldn't work.

the time frame was a little bit crazy. we were printing the day of the show. we were printing on saturdays and sundays. we were printing 14 hours a day. simpson: on different ones, we ran into big hurdles in the way that the contrast of the original image and the way that that was translated -- some of them were slightly different. noblet: the one with the car we realized wouldn't work. the density of the positives and negatives were wrong, and we didn't have enough cleaning. it was kind of smudgy. every time, it seems that it's a different set of problems, and that, really, that it's a different technology that's employed to get different results. i cannot solely rely on one sort of technology in order to do it.

it's kind of by trial and error. what's the best way to get the job done, to get the show up, to get the images on the felt. that's it. that's it. it's definitely it. it's what it should have been and what it is. looks great. really good. this is incredible right here. there's going to be a show in soho worth seeing this fall. so you do like it?

it's nice to see some art in this place. simpson: i was surprised that he wanted to open with my work, because there are other artists who could have opened the gallery, and who are quite well-known, also. so it's a unique opportunity for me in terms of re-entering the new york gallery scene. congratulations. thank you. man: well, lorna simpson is one of the foremost practitioners of what i would describe as postconceptual art.

she's not confined to a single medium. it's a very rare thing that you find that kind of intellectual inquiry and that kind of consistency and qualitative thinking presented in a single package, alongside work which is both intriguing and, dare one say, also, i think, very beautiful in many respects. she is an african-american woman. there are all sorts of expectations, and how you deal with those. lorna is incredibly stylish about the way in which she deals with all of those issues, takes all of those issues and steers it back towards, "no, it's not about me. it's not about this issue. "it's not about what my ethnic background is. it's about the work." if she wasn't a great artist, it wouldn't matter what those other issues were.

woman: what's on the other side, lorna? was that the mistake? bad print. oh. no, i was just asking. thirty-two bucks a pop for the material. i know -- the felt. i know. i know. so when did these images start? kelly: thelma golden is a curator at the whitney museum of american art. she's somebody who has a relatively unique ability to persuade almost anybody that they should engage themselves in looking at work that is very often very difficult for them to deal with. i mean, since the pieces have to do with sex or public sex and private acts in public spaces, i'm thinking of different environments that are cues. and do the texts that go with these sort of refer specifically to sex? yeah. and it refers to the site. so this one -- there's text about a sociologist

who studies the activities of men in public bathrooms and, kind of, his role, or kind of how he goes about his study. simpson: with the park, and in the fact that it's an aerial view of a park at night, kind of has a two-sided thing. it's about watching what goes on in the park, as well as how the trees and the bushes act as cover and shelter, and creates these kind of secluded areas. that's the way that either it entices or positions the viewer. and the te that goes with it is as though there were small narratives, kind of not so much describing acts themselves, but describing individuals and rendezvous. this is photography voyeurism

about watching people who have sex in public. i mean, so there's many different layers in the way that the text kind of approaches the imagery and the act itself. it's not so much about describing it, but that -- how does one meet, or select a particular space, and how do you get around the space, or that environment, and around the fact that it is public. kelly: and here we have a very strong body of work where the figure is wholly absent, where the context is constructed by the text. and yet there is that real sense of presence,

is that real sense that the body is imminent, or the body has been there or will be there. in an office building, it was just nice to have the two clocks, since it's about two people meeting after work and thinking of and choosing a place within the building. so it's kind of about time and architecture and what space is available. simpson: it's kind of about this rendezvous where they feel that there's some safety or area that they can have an intimate act. and, kind of, the text then goes back and forth about figuring out that space architecturally, vis-à-vis, the hours of the day in terms of the volume of people that go through there, and what time would be convenient to meet.

kelly: it's almost like you're eavesdropping on something, and that refers back to the voice in the text in the way that you're almost hearing something you're not meant to hear. you're finding something you weren't quite supposed to find. simpson: for me, the work is really about descriptions. so it's kind of encoding a different description

on what you would take as just a beautiful cityscape or a beautiful landscape, and inscribing something else on it. i mean, it's been kind of complicated in process, but, i mean, once you have it up on the wall and it's done, it looks very simple and kind of minimal, which is what i like. but i certainly wish it were a minimal place to get to in terms of process. stick it through, and then we... kelly: if you pick the right artist, and you give them a modicum of security and confidence -- and i'm not talking about financial. i'm talking about emotional and psychological. then you create a context for those artists to grow. it's really about being confident in their work, and i think that somebody like lorna is a very good example. she is famous at this point.

she has had that kind of initial attention. simpson: in working with a dealer, it's not just about making money, which everyone loves and enjoys, but it's also about thinking about the work in terms of a career, and thinking about planning things in terms of the work, in terms of opportunities to make new works and to really practice as an artist. kelly: we're very much a part of the process, every stage of that process. it's never an issue of, you know, the truck rolls up and the art comes off the truck. that is not the way we work. we work over a long period of time, and try and contribute to the creative process of the artist. but you do need, like, all four corners. yeah. simpson: he has a lot of confidence in me as an artist in terms of that he's secure enough to go with that. so...i have my fingers crossed that all goes well.

we have four hours. so i think that that's the real question. can we make the decisions and install in four hours? kelly: the day of the opening, there was a lotof tension. everything was happening very fast. i mean, it was mayhem.

we literally got the whole show at 4:45, and we were opening at 6:00. you know, we were not so much installing. we were more sort of spraying the show up. it's a wonderful moment. yoóve been talking about these things in the abstract for a year or something. you've been trying to make it happen for at least three to four months in practical terms. and there's a moment when the artist walks through the door and sticks it up on the wall, and you just think, "yeah," you know. and that's magic. okay? and then we're between brentwood and grant. up a little. up a little. up a little. kelly: i never had one moment when i thought she wouldn't pull this off. we never sat down and started trying to figure out

what plan "b" would be. there wasn't a plan "b." i mean, we knew that lorna would get through it and get it done. thank you. kelly: it happened with about two and a half minutes to spare. it was a very close call, but there's also something very particular about those kind of moments and that kind of energy. hi. how are you? good. it's terrific, isn't it? i love it. excuse me. it's very nice. kelly: the kind of public investment, the social investment, the psychological investment that goes into these events is also part of what makes the work function, and what makes it great. and, you know, all of those tensions

exist and reside to make the work more intense. the text is wonderful. golden: there's also the experience of lorna's work, of this sort of discovery, and i think that all of the work doesn't necessarily just open itself up and let you in automatically. you sort of work your way into it in a way that the text often doesn't reveal itself on the first reading. kelly: you know, somebody actually stopped me and said to me, "this is the first time since the '80s "that we have felt that there is life "in the contemporary art world. "there's something really fundamental and important happening." i think it's testament to lorna. i think it's testament to her work and what that means to people, and the kind of impact it's had.

simpson: i kind of walked away from that exhibition actually very happy and very satisfied that i pushed as hard as i did, and at the same time engaged work that i thought was important for me to make. kelly: everybody's standing there wondering what she's going to do next. and you know damn well that she's not going to take the easy option. simpson: in the previous work, the way they were focused was kind of on the body and using the body itself. now there's an absence of the body, but you're still talking about activities of people or individuals or of the body in a public realm. so what the viewer is presented with is the space, kind of physical space.

kelly: so what is this artist going to do? she's going to push it. she's going to push the envelope. she's going to confound her critics. she's going to go in exactly the direction that you would not have predicted. and she's going to come up with an extraordinary new body of work. it's my job to provide the context and the confidence for that artist, for those artists, to continue to reinvent themselves, to continue to push the envelope, to continue to challenge themselves, and thereby challenge the audience and challenge the american public. -- captions by vitac -- burbank, pittsburgh, washington

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